Chapter 2 - The Iron Gate of the Moretti Estate
The Moretti compound on the northern edge of Evanston wasn't a house; it was a limestone fortress squatting behind twelve-foot perimeter walls topped with motion-sensitive fiber optics and razor wire.
When the convoy of SUVs rolled through the heavy wrought-iron gates, the guards didn't salute. They nodded once, their hands resting casually near the holsters beneath their winter coats.
Leah sat in the passenger seat of the lead car, shivering despite the interior heater blasting at maximum capacity. Sal drove with one hand, his thick fingers drumming an erratic rhythm against the steering wheel while his eyes flicked constantly to the rearview mirror.
“You shouldn't have called him directly,” Sal said suddenly, breaking the silence as they rounded a circular drive lined with ancient weeping willows that whipped in the gale.
Leah turned her head, wiping a streak of condensation off the side window. “She had his card in her pocket. Sealed in plastic. What was I supposed to do, drop her off at a bus station?”
“Most people who find that card throw it in the river,” Sal muttered, parking the SUV directly beneath the grand colonnade of the main house. “Or they sell it to the Tribune. You’re either very brave or very stupid, Nurse Mercer.”
“Right now, I’m leaning toward stupid,” Leah said, pushing the heavy door open before Sal could reach for the handle.
Inside, the estate was a museum of old money and cold marble. High vaulted ceilings echoed with the sound of hurried footsteps as Dr. Edmund Crane—the syndicate’s resident physician, looking like he had just been dragged out of a warm bed in his pajamas—met them at the double doors with an aluminum trauma kit.
Gabriel carried Cecilia past them without a word, heading straight for the master suite on the ground floor where a massive stone fireplace had already been stoked into a roaring blaze.
Leah followed close behind, her wet sneakers leaving dark footprints across the Persian runner.
“Strip her down,” Dr. Crane commanded, snapping open his medical bag with jerky, impatient movements. “Get those wet garments off before the pulmonary edema sets in. Sal, get the heater closer to the bed.”
“Don't touch her clothes yet,” Leah said, stepping between the doctor and the bed with her hand raised.
Crane froze, his thin eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. “Excuse me? I have practiced medicine for thirty years, young lady. I think I know how to treat a case of hypothermia.”
“Look at her fingers,” Leah insisted, pointing toward Cecilia’s right hand, which remained curled tightly into a fist against her chest. “She’s not just cold. She’s holding something inside the sleeve of her nightgown. If you yank those wet clothes off without checking, whatever she’s clutching is going to tear.”
Gabriel, who was kneeling by the edge of the mattress, gently peeling the damp wool away from his grandmother’s arm, stopped. He reached out with two fingers, his movements remarkably gentle for a man who looked like he could snap a baseball bat with his bare hands.
He slid his hand up the sleeve of the nightgown.
With a soft, metallic scrape, something heavy dropped onto the goose-down comforter.
It wasn't a weapon. It wasn't jewelry.
It was a small, leather-bound ledger, no larger than a passport, its pages swollen and purpled from salt water and canal silt. On the cover, embossed in fading gold leaf that had begun to flake off into the fabric, were two initials: A.M.
Gabriel stared at the book as if it were a live grenade.
“Arthur Moretti,” Leah murmured, remembering the name the old woman had been screaming down in the dark water. “Your grandfather.”
Gabriel didn't answer. He picked up the soggy ledger by its corner, his eyes narrowing as he read the first visible line of ink through the smudged, water-logged paper.
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“That book was supposed to have been burned in 1984,” Gabriel whispered, his voice so quiet Leah had to read his lips to catch the words.
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